That the Mind Dwells in the Heart or the Brain

¹ Whoever maintains that those who say the intellect is established in the heart, or in the brain, are Messalians, let him know that he wrongly assails the saints. For the great Athanasius says that the rational faculty of the soul resides in the brain; while Macarius, who is in no way lacking in greatness, places the energy of the intellect in the heart. And nearly all the saints are in agreement with these. For when the divine Gregory of Nyssa says that the intellect, being incorporeal, is neither within nor outside the body, he is not contradicting those holy men; for those men say that the intellect is within the body inasmuch as it is conjoined to it. Saying this, then, in another manner, they differ not at all from him. For neither does the one who says that the Word of God once came to be within a virginal and all-blameless womb—as there conjoined, beyond all reason, to the human compound that is ours, through ineffable love for mankind—stand opposed to the one who says that the Divine, being incorporeal, is not in a place.